In the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the widespread spirit of protest has expanded to a wide array of cultural symbols—ranging from statues of Columbus and George Washington, to the movie Gone With The Wind.
Activists are demanding the renaming of institutions, major streets, changing flags, and discrediting anyone and everything directly or remotely connected to the evils of chattel slavery in American history.
Some of these campaigns are questionable, even among leaders of the Black community. But in the current environment, any claim or posture that’s seen as emanating from the Black Lives Matter movement, however indirectly, is taken as morally unassailable.
This revolutionary spirit raises an important question… in the relentless quest to discredit and accord as inconsequential all things relating to the evils of slavery, will the Bible be next?
Among many groups God’s Word is already under attack for certain Old and New Testament passages and the seemingly permissive attitude towards one race or culture owning people as slaves.
Every thinking reader of the Bible is bound to ask, especially now, “Does this book actually condone slavery?”. To be sure, slavery is not the only issue the Bible’s story causes us to question. The Old Testament is rife with palace intrigues, polygamy, divorce, violence and the like, and godly people are very often part of the problem.
Although the New Testament is decidedly improved on the matter of slavery, it still seems to fall far short of that which twenty-first century human rights would expect. For example… there are no women among the twelve disciples of Jesus and Christian masters do have slaves working for them.
To address an issue as important as slavery referenced and described as acceptable in the Bible, we need to step back and ask three questions: What are the theological, political, and cultural contexts in which the Old Testament narrative unfolds, and how is the behavior of God’s people in the Old Testament expected to be different from those of other cultures? What are the major developments in the New Testament that give us a clue to interpretation of Old Testament ethics? And are we expected to further extrapolate changes in behavior beyond the New Testament times to the present day?
To begin with, it should not be forgotten that the Old Testament narratives contain elements and practices which are ethical, ceremonial, and social. Therefore, while informative and historical in context, their application to the present day should be carefully evaluated. The historical-social elements of the Biblical narratives typically do not apply to contemporary Christians, and the ceremonial ones are largely fulfilled in the completed work of Christ on the Cross. So, it is the ethical aspects of Old Testament teaching with which we should be concerned, and there is indeed much to consider.
As an example, on the way to Canaan, God tells his people through Moses that the alien, or foreigner, among them should not be oppressed (Exodus 23:9). The reason given is fascinating… the people of Israel know in their hearts how it feels to be oppressed! The word translated “alien” is not the same as slave, but the experience of the Israelites in Egypt was certainly that of slaves. Thus, we see the first statement on human rights expressed in the Bible: the alien [not an Israelite] was to be treated as a citizen; in fact, he was to be loved as one of their own (Leviticus 19:33-34). Even when Hebrew law and custom shared in the common heritage of the ancient world, there is a unique care in God’s directives for those people who by status were not considered to be “of the chosen people”, something absent from the law codes of Babylon and Assyria.
Here’s the thing: The Law of Moses (Genesis through Deuteronomy and all of the commandments contained within) is not always a description of morality or even what God views as morally right. So even if some biblical passages seem to endorse slavery, it does not mean that God endorses slavery or any form of brutality towards any group of people.
This is so important to understand. Jesus explains it this way: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not to be so.” -Matthew 19:8. God never endorsed the concept of divorce, nor slavery, nor any concept of hurting or harming another person. But, he permitted his people to exist within a corrupt world by establishing standards [the Mosaic Law] of conduct which could allow them to rise above the evils around them.
The Law was designed in order to provide a framework of governance for an emerging people, a nation, something attainable for the Israelites who were so accustomed to the evil culture they were living around. As Moses said in Deuteronomy 30:11 “Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.”
The New Testament further gives us a paradigm to interpret Old Testament practices. In one of their notorious fault-finding missions, the Pharisees test Jesus on the subject of divorce (Matthew 19:1-9; Mark 10:2-9). He initially appears to play into their hands, asking what Mosaic Law has to say on the subject. When they gleefully quote the permission of Moses to divorce one’s wife, Jesus lays down a method of interpretation that has to be taken very seriously. He makes it clear that certain Old Testament commandments were to be understood as concessions to the hardness of the human heart rather than as expressions of God’s holy character. He goes on to reference how this was not the state of affairs in the beginning—that is, before the fall of man.
One might conclude, that because of God’s great love for humanity, he “modified his high standards” to allow his chosen people specifically, to grow and rise above the sinful attitudes and practices of the ancient world.
The regulation of slavery should therefore be seen as a practical step to deal with the realities of the day resulting from the human fall. The aberrations that lead to alienation among individuals, races, and nations are the result of a fundamental broken relationship between humankind and God.
Within this tragic scenario, Scripture comes as a breath of fresh air as it seeks to redeem the “situations of sin” and set humanity on a path of ever-increasing improvement of man’s predicament. While the Bible does not reject slavery outright, to draw the conclusion that it actually favors slavery… is completely wrong and out of character with a loving God.
Scripture does reveal that slavery is not ideal, both in Old Testament laws forbidding the enslavement of fellow Israelites, the law of jubilee, and in New Testament applications of Christ.
In fact, the Bible teaches that the feeling of superiority in general is sin (Philippians 2:1-8). The evaluation of slavery by biblical standards, and principles demands that the abhorrent concept be abolished. The pre-fall statement that should guide and ultimately eliminate such (and any) practices of superiority is the declaration that all humans—men and women—are made in the image of God.
On this principle, the Bible even lays the foundation for progressing far beyond what was possible in New Testament times by addressing the very economic discrimination and favoritism of which slavery is the worst expression (James 2:1-9; 5:1-6). Of course, it must be reckoned, that the Church has taken many centuries, far too long, to live out what Scripture taught long ago, and no doubt we continue to struggle, often in silence, in the fight against injustices and brutality towards people of color.
The time delay between the Word of Scripture and its implementation in society is often due to the “holy huddle” mentality prevailing among Christians who are largely unconcerned about issues outside of their immediate periphery.
Another reason many Christians continue to remain silent in the face of injustice is the platonic view of the cosmos we have adopted, implying that life in the hereafter is the only issue to be addressed, while we watch the world go by in its destructive way. Both mentalities are sadly misguided.
Those of us who say that we believe the Bible to be the Word of God have to raise our level of awareness and involvement regarding social issues. Having failed to do so, we have let these issues of racial inequality pass into the hands of those who may not be Christians, but are better informed about social injustice and concerned enough to fight wrong practices through legal means.
While they have no logical basis to do what they are doing, the real tragedy is that Christians who do have a basis to address these issues remain largely indifferent. May the Lord of Scripture open our eyes to see that God is interested in the redemption of the “whole of creation” and not just disembodied souls and spirits!
The Bible does not condone slavery any more than it condones polygamy or divorce. The Bible has never glossed over the concept of slavery or other shortcomings of humanity.
Instead, it establishes humane limits for an existing, evil system. It contains many references to slavery, which was a common practice in antiquity. Biblical texts outline the legal status of slaves, economic roles of slavery, types of slavery, and debt slavery, which thoroughly explain the institution of slavery in Israel in antiquity. The law of Moses laid the groundwork for the eventual demise of one of the most demeaning institutions in human society… the evils of slavery.
